Nintendo restates commitment to region locking

Nintendo has received a lot of flak over the past few weeks for their decision to region lock their consoles, and the company isn’t budging on their stance either. According to Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, the company has good reason to stick to its policy, which goes all the way back to the NES. Sony and Microsoft has opened up their consoles, and shied away from region locking, but it doesn’t look like Nintendo will follow suit.

“I hope that game fans can understand that the industry isn’t doing this solely out of business ego,” Iwata said, in an interview. “There are some reasons behind it.”

“From some people’s perspective, it might seem like a kind of restriction,” said Iwata. “However, we hope people can appreciate the fact that we’re selling our products worldwide. There are many different regions around the world, and each region has its own cultural acceptance and legal restrictions, as well as different age ratings. There are always things that we’re required to do in each different region, which may go counter to the idea that players around the world want the freedom to play whatever they want. ”

Nintendo has been struggling with their Wii U hardware sales, but I don’t think that unlocking their systems would really change that.